Michigan State enters NCAA Tournament with 29 wins but still searching for that ceiling

NEW YORK -Twenty-seven days ago, Michigan State escaped with a three-point win over a downtrodden Iowa team, coming back from eight points down to take the lead with a minute left and go on to win.

Afterward, Tom Izzo took stock of his team.

“I don’t think there’s any question that we’re a ways away from our ceiling,” Izzo said that night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. “Now, as it gets a little deeper you say ‘Are you ever going to get to your ceiling?’ We may not.”

Michigan State is now nearly a month deeper into its season. Whether it is any closer to its ceiling, or if it will get there, is still an open question after the Spartans’ Big Ten tournament semifinal loss to Michigan on Saturday afternoon here at Madison Square Garden.

That loss snapped a 13-game win streak and came six days after Michigan State won an outright Big Ten title. Izzo cautioned not to panic over one loss.

Yet only one of those 13 wins, on Feb. 10 over Purdue, came against a team expected to be in the NCAA Tournament field. Of Michigan State’s 29 wins this season, only two came against teams comfortably in the tournament field six days before Selection Sunday. Besides Purdue, the other came back in